MacOS X a dog or just in need of a good bitch slap?

And this is why I made sure to order my two iMacs (work and home) before Lion shipped. It looked like a mess in the WWDC keynote, and nothing in that article gives any reassurance.

*sigh*

That's what I've been fearing.

I suppose I'll be milking Snow Leopard as long as I can. It seems strange not to jump right into a new MacOS version as soon as it's available (if not before).

Ouch: "Eliminating the physical desktop metaphor completely, the same way Gmail has eliminated the need to have mail folders. With current instant-search technology, there's no need for anal folder organization."

There are basic, fundamental problems with the search heuristic. It can work magic in some cases, but in others it's far inferior to browsing. I can go into this in excruciating detail but I'll spare you here. (This is not to devalue search in the cases where it works and works well, just saying that sometimes browse is superior.)

ddt

It is not as bad as the article makes it seem, I am a power user and quite enjoying it. Major leaps and bounds no, some of the new things gimmicky yes, but wasn't Aqua when OS X launched? I am more worried what come after this? Is the next version just going to be iOS with no desktop at all or is this the end of the line.

Daniel

I worry that the true problem is that the OS is mature, and that we get increasingly daft revisions in the attempt to make it shiny again.

I think that is the problem.

Daniel

When SPOTLIGHT was intro'd I thought the need for organizing files could have been eliminated. I think it's a worthy-enough goal.

JW is right, as is the problem of "Eliminating the physical desktop metaphor completely, the same way Gmail has eliminated the need to have mail folders. With current instant-search technology, there's no need for anal folder organization." This is no good at all. Just as terminal lurks under any modern OS (what a difference from the old mac OS) for power users and developers, another layer of us needs the old physical desktop metaphor. I suppose Gramps and Grammy may be happy with the search, but that will only go so far for the rest of us. This smacks me as less Vista and more Bob.

In particular, I'm concerned about the interface to mail. How much damage has it suffered? Will I still be able to sort by size? Will I be able to have the flexibility I have now in addition to a better view? I mean Apple, how long has letterbox been kicking about as an add on? Why didn't you just integrate that?

The multiple spaces metaphor is very popular for Steve. Long ago somebody pointed to it as a legacy of his doing too much acid.

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bahamut
In particular, I'm concerned about the interface to mail. How much damage has it suffered? Will I still be able to sort by size? Will I be able to have the flexibility I have now in addition to a better view? I mean Apple, how long has letterbox been kicking about as an add on? Why didn't you just integrate that? .

You can turn off organization view, yes you can sort by size. Not sure about the other items.

Daniel

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John Willoughby
I worry that the true problem is that the OS is mature, and that we get increasingly daft revisions in the attempt to make it shiny again.

Exactly. And this would be fine if you could install older more logical versions of OS X on new machines but you can't.

From a UI perspective (usability, not overall features) I think Tiger and/or Panther were the most usable OS X versions - there's been increasing silly fripperies ever since.

Perhaps we should start having a more teleological view of operating systems?

What's sad is that they don't issue a real snow leopard… an OS that addresses their wild inconsistencies in UI and pure weirdness (for example… the lack of letterbox in mail.app even though all the Mac screens out there now are quite horizontal). They could excise the stuff that doesn't work (cough front row cough) and clean up the rough edges.

But no.

People still read gizmodo?

I quit with their format change months back. Which was obviously after their buying stolen goods.

Back to Lion... how is it in terms of disabling or ignoring the most Lion-y features, and trying to use it as one would Snow Leopard? I'm thinking of how people were able to switch the New Coke look in Vista and use it as if it were XP.

ddt

You can use it without the new interface elements. Over all I like it more than Leopard/snow Leopard.
It's more stable, more consistent. Mail is a much nicer program now. Very customizable. It no longer needs letterbox to be useful.
The icon view (a la the iPad interface) is useless, but I never launch that, so it doesn't get in the way.
The only "gotcha" for me is that there is no Power PC support for my old programs/games. So I won't upgrade all my Macs. But my day to day machine has been running it for a while and I won't go back.

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Dr Phred
You can use it without the new interface elements. Over all I like it more than Leopard/snow Leopard.
It's more stable, more consistent. Mail is a much nicer program now. Very customizable. It no longer needs letterbox to be useful.
The icon view (a la the iPad interface) is useless, but I never launch that, so it doesn't get in the way.
The only "gotcha" for me is that there is no Power PC support for my old programs/games. So I won't upgrade all my Macs. But my day to day machine has been running it for a while and I won't go back.

Well, that's good to hear. I have a partition on my new iMac set aside for Lion; I guess I'll do the upgrade in a month or so, assuming no disastrous bugs emerge in the wake of the release. I'll have both a Snow Leopard partition on the new iMac and my old iMac for my older software (including Tiger!--I have a bunch of Appleworks files I still use).

I'm still nervous about Apple's apparent direction. Search is *not* a substitute for an organized Finder.

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The only "gotcha" for me is that there is no Power PC support for my old programs/games.

I've heard people hacking Rosetta back into Lion, and if not that, someone will write an emulator.

Not going to worry about UI prematurely.

I'm not so sure an emulator is going to be that fast in coming and I very much doubt someone will come up with an adequate hack. It's going to be a problem for those of us legacy users.

But why oh why is the cretin from Intuit still on Apple's board? I don't get it. Surely "What it is it used to do around here?" should be asked of him.

Sheepshaver works without Rosetta. But it's not the most stable thing in the world. I'd recommend the CoI (Classic on Intel) Chubby Bunny wrapper; it's easier to set up.

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I'd recommend the CoI (Classic on Intel) Chubby Bunny wrapper

Why do I read that and go "Eew!"